


Northumberland

by RembrandtsWife



Series: Northumberland [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fawnlock, Gen, Inspired by Fanart, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 22:24:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After he is invalided home from Afghanistan, a handsome bequest from his uncle Hamish allows John Watson to take refuge for a while in a small cottage in the Northumbrian woods. But he's not as alone as he thinks he is....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Northumberland

**Author's Note:**

> So, hey, more Fawnlock, though he doesn't appear onstage. This little story is a prequel to "Rutting", and there will probably be more to fill in the gap between this story and that one. Props to Paula/bennyslegs, who started it all by putting a fawn's ears and tail on Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock.

If it hadn't been for Uncle Hamish, John Watson might have gone the same route as so many soldiers who'd been to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2002. They'd had their share of suicides in the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers; he could so easily have been one of them.

"Thank you, Uncle Hamish," he muttered, looking out the window at the dimming view. He hadn't even spent a night here yet, but he was already thinking about making this cottage this full-time home.

Beyond the faded chintz curtains, night was settling over Dunlairdie's Wood. That's what the old survey maps called it; the locals called it just "the forest", or "the weird wood", or sometimes something that made no sense, "the wode wood". Wode? woad? John didn't care. He didn't care if the forest was haunted, if that was what they meant. As long as there were no guns, no IVs stuck in his arm, no therapists asking prodding questions or giving him even more prodding silences, he would take as many ghosts or werewolves or whatever was supposed to be out there as you pleased.

Under cover of the trees, the sunlight dwindled away far more rapidly than in the city. In the blink of an eye, everything was black, and John saw only his own reflection, sagging eyes and hollow cheeks, against the window-pane. He drew the curtains and turned back to the fireplace, ready to put more wood on the flames and make something to eat.

It had taken almost a year for his uncle's solicitor to track him down. Hamish Dunlairdie, Uncle Hamish though he was really a cousin of John's mother, had died while John was on his last tour of duty. Never married, not even a "confirmed bachelor" who had a lifelong friend of the same sex, he had left John a tidy sum and this small cottage in the northern woods. He had heard nothing of it until he was invalided out, suffocating in a small bedsit in London and wondering what to do with the rest of his life. Once the investments were all worked out, John had given notice at the surgery where he was doing very occasional and very dull locum work and come to investigate the cottage where Uncle Hamish had spent much of his life.

There was still a faint lingering smell of Hamish's tobacco throughout the place. It was strongest in the kitchen, which John thought odd; maybe he had smoked while he cooked? Cutting up tomatoes for a salad with surgical precision, John remembered sitting on Hamish's lap while the big brown leather armchair creaked beneath their weight, the smell of that pipesmoke and the leather all around him, listening to stories of standing stones and bogles, druids and the Shee, and then to the adults' conversation, politics, medicine, politics....

After his salad, boiled potatoes, and solitary steak came a cuppa tea in the armchair by the fire--chintz, like the curtains, not leather, but comfortable enough that he woke hours later to a cold hearth and a stiff neck. Tomorrow morning he'd go out for a long walk. Nobody here to rush him along.

He slept later than he'd intended, but that was all right. It was a good bit colder here than in London, and sleeping in gave the sun a chance to rise high enough to shine between the branches and light the forest floor. After a solid breakfast, John put on his walking shoes and his heaviest jacket, grabbed his cane, stuck a small bottle of water in his pocket, and set out into the woods.

The cottage sat in a small clearing at the end of a narrow, rutted road that wound in from the northwest. John's rented Land Rover was parked on the north side of the cottage; the front door looked east, and a flagstone path went down from the steps, curled around to the right, and snaked into the woods behind the cottage, where it soon dwindled to a hiking trail. It was this trail that John took, picking his way over roots and rocks and fallen branches, careful of slick places. The forest smelled of old green, of moss and leaf-mould, of leaves breathing in the sunlight and breathing out clean air for bird and beast, of new life burgeoning out of decay. It was cool and damp and pierced by shafts of golden light that alternated with a green twilight, birdcalls that alternated with tiny rustlings and deep silence. Nothing less like Afghanistan could be imagined, and John felt the tension leaving his shoulders even as his feet and legs started to remind him he hadn't walked this much in months.

The trail wound south and west and then north, eventually circling back to the cottage. John was nearly blown and every joint was wailing by the time he hitched up the two low steps and into the living room, his mind dominated by thoughts of a hot bath and then a hot lunch. How long had he been out? about two hours? God, but he was out of shape.

After lunch he fell asleep on the couch with a book across his lap, unaware that strange eyes were peering in the window as he snored.

John did nothing but putter around the cottage the next day, nursing his leg. The next day he drove into Newcastle for some supplies, getting an early start, and eating lunch in town. He had thought he would want a nap again once he had unpacked everything, yet he felt strangely restless. Although it was well after noon, he laced on his walking shoes again, put bottled water and an apple and a granola bar into his pockets, and then his compass, too, and headed out into the forest.

This time he left the trail as it began to bend north and made his way between stands of birch and bunches of low, tough, trailing brambles, deeper into the woods. John sweated and puffed as the ground climbed slowly but inexorably, pausing only when a small stream cut through the brown leaves of his path. Then he sat down on a hip-high length of fallen tree-trunk, half-covered with orange mushrooms, and ate his snack and drank his water. When he was finished, the shadows were long under the trees, yet some impulse made him go forward, up the little stream and further into unfamiliar territory.

The stream deepened as he climbed closer to its source. It sang to him like a siren, luring him deeper into the shadows of the wood at dusk. At last he came to a curious cluster of rocks, sharp-topped boulders higher than his head, where the stream emerged as a little spring. He could smell the mineral sweetness of the water all around him, intoxicating as wine. Without much thought of the risks, he stooped, grunting, and refilled his bottle from the source and drank.

The taste of the water, too, was as intoxicating as wine, as liquor. John gasped, licked his lips, drank again, till he had drained the bottle. He stooped once more and paused, hearing behind him a sudden sharp rustle. Straightening, he realized that it was nearly night; he could see nothing but a faint rose-orange glow on the heads of the rocks, the last touch of sunset. What was the matter with him? Here he was in a bloody forest, in the middle of nowhere, after dark!

He capped the empty bottle and put it away, then checked carefully through all the pockets of the jacket until he found what he had hoped for--a torch. It was small, but batteries were still sound enough. As its light flooded the rocks before him, he heard again that rustling--as if something fairly large had moved and then gone still.

Slowly he turned round to play the light back the way he had come. The trees were strokes of unearthly color against a canvas of black. John checked his compass; at least he could see that clearly. He needed to head east, and downslope, following the stream, and then he should at some point strike the hiking trail.

He looked up into the canopy and saw only a few faint glimmers of stars between the looming black branches. The stream, so alluring earlier, seemed to be laughing at him now. Elves and fairies, lights that lured unwary travellers... Uncle Hamish's stories seemed so charming when recalled indoors by a warm fire, but not so much when remembered after sunset in the depth of the wood. And John would swear there was *something*, something that had rustled and then gone still, something watching him from the shadows.

With his compass in one hand and his torch in the other, John began to retrace his steps. He kept his attention fixed doggedly on the path, the glitter of the stream in the electric light, the now-treacherous slope of the land. He was resolved to walk steadily and not to run, not to run, he had fought in Afghanistan, he was a soldier and a doctor.... But Afghanistan had been heat and sunlight and open wounds, yellow-brown land and grit in everything, everything too bright, too loud, too present, and this, this forest, the light and the shadows and the pervasive green smell, and was that a flash of something over to his left, something moving, a flash of white, he would *not* run, and he was running, the light of his torch swinging everywhere, useless as a strobe light, and the something moving, the white flash and the deeper shadow, something running and John could not tell whether he was chasing it or it was chasing him, but it was drawing closer--

He saw a light. A warm, yellowish, electric light. The lamp in the kitchen, shining through the rear window of the cottage. He had run straight across the hiking trail and come up behind the house.

Panting, he fumbled to put away the compass and find the back door key, which he had not used yet. It was only when he was inside, leaning against the door and laughing under his breath, that he realized first, he had not felt so alive since the day he was shot, and second, he had left his cane somewhere in the woods.


End file.
